Mssr_Renard This new album is a very seventies/late sixties sounding album. Post-Coltrane bop-music with older and younger musicians side to side. It reminds a bit of The Cookers (an all-star post-bop outfit with some great albums). The drumming of Lenny White is really restrained and nothing like what he does in Return to Forever. Great to hear Binker Golding guesting on this album.

The production of this album is very retro, and the compositions and solos are really great. It almost sounds like a lost post-bop-album than as a modern jazz-record, wich exactly what I like.

You can easily buy this album through Gearbox records (digital or physical) wich is great, because you can support the artists better, than just stream the album.

snobb Trumpeter Charles Tolliver made his name during the late 60s-early 70s, playing creative post bop in small bands with pianist Stanley Cowell and sax player Gary Bartz among others and co-founding an impressive progressive big band Music Inc. His albums from early 70s all are classics and sound pretty well even now.

From late 70s Tolliver disappeared from active recordings with a very few predominantly live recordings coming from 90s and 00's. "Connect" is his first studio album in fourteen years.

Recorded and released in UK, the veteran's album is of traditional 70s size - 39 minutes (or vinyl LP) long. It contains four Tolliver originals, some of them has been already heard on his more current albums in big band arrangements. His cross-generation all-American quintet (recorded in renown RAK studio during European tour) contains seasoned musicians bassist Buster Williams (played with Herbie Hancock and Archie Shepp among many others) and drummer Lenny White (of RTF fame), mid-generation altoist Jesse Davis and youngster pianist Keith Brown. Fashionable Brits tenor Binker Golding participates as a guest on two tracks.

Well recorded, music itself is quite conservative and recalls more early 70s than second decade of a New Millennium. What is not necessarily a bad thing, just depending on the listener's taste. Compositions are tight, up-tempo, quite straight and not too knotty, just well played without any tricks. Fans of post bop and early fusion ca.72 will probably enjoy the sound which is really rare nowadays.

There are two reasons why "Connect" isn't as great an album as some of Tolliver's best works. First, compositions are not all that memorable, and second - drummer Lenny White (as almost always) sounds very much as rock drummer in a jazz band - heavyweight,straight-forward and non-subtle that doesn't add elegance to whole music at all. It's interesting that Binker Golding's, who is an artist of very different background and generation, soloing is quite successful and embellishes the song's sound a lot.

Steve Wyzard BRIGHT & BRILLIANT

For your consideration, we present yet another entry in the "Should-Be-Much-Better-Known-Than-They-Are" category of jazz trumpeters. Charles Tolliver, who has played with everybody from Jackie McLean to McCoy Tyner, from Max Roach to Louis Hayes, usually performs in much larger ensembles which have helped to ensure his relative anonymity. In mid-1969 he recorded The Ringer for Black Lion Records (it's been re-issued a number of times on different labels with different covers) with his quartet Music, Inc: Stanley Cowell on piano, Steve Novosel on bass, and Jimmy Hopps on drums. This album is a stand-out performance of its time: one listen will demonstrate why it demands a much-more accessible re-issue on CD.

"Plight" opens the proceedings with a bang: Tolliver's bubbly yet brassy tone on his long solo leaps out from your speakers, so monitor your volume control carefully. He eschews the flugelhorn entirely on this album, and makes no bones about dominating the self-composed material. Only Stanley Cowell from the rest of his group receives any substantial soloing time, but he is unfortunately buried in the right-channel of this recording (typical late-60s, early-70s engineering). The epic "On the Nile" starts slowly before Jimmy Hopps' busy percussion ignites the musical engines. This track must be in the running for Tolliver's greatest moment in a recording studio: big, spacious slabs of lyrical trumpeting, one blistering, stuttering solo after another. Too hot to handle! The upbeat brilliance of the title track ends suddenly before the album's first drastic change-of-pace. "Mother Wit" begins as a moving adagio, giving Tolliver a chance to play lugubriously. Steve Novosel's bass line (buried in the left-channel) pushes the group forward to a swinging crescendo before the original tempo is once again resumed. The light-hearted closer "Spur" gives everyone a chance to strut their stuff, with Tolliver joining in last of all.

One can only hope this fabulous album will someday be rescued from the dust of oblivion. If you can find The Ringer in any format, do not hesitate to snap it up immediately. One final mystery: the name-dropping liner notes (credit: Valerie Wilmer) state that this album was Tolliver's first under his own name. Yet just one year previously, Paper Man (featuring Gary Bartz, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Joe Chambers) was released on the exact same label, and is also well worth looking for. I realize the times were different, but how could this have been missed?